Amber McLaughlin Wiki – Amber McLaughlin Biography
The first openly transgender woman to be executed in the US is asking the governor of Missouri for clemency, citing mental health issues. Lawyers for Amber McLaughlin, now 49, on Monday asked Republican Gov. Mike Parson to pardon her. McLaughlin was convicted of killing 45-year-old Beverly Guenther on November 20, 2003. Guenther was raped and stabbed to death in St. Louis County.
There are no known cases of an openly transgender inmate having been executed in the US before, according to the Anti-Execution Death Penalty Information Center. It’s wrong when someone is executed anyway, but I hope this is the first time it hasn’t happened,” said federal public defender Larry Komp. “Amber has shown great courage in accepting who she is as a transgender woman despite the possibility of people reacting with hate, so I admire their display of courage.”
Amber McLaughlin Age
Amber McLaughlin is 49 years old.
Incident Detail
McLaughlin’s lawyers cited her traumatic childhood and mental health issues, which the jury never heard, in the leniency petition. A foster father rubbed feces in her face when she was a toddler and her adoptive father touched her, according to the letter to Parson. She attempted suicide several times, both as a child and as an adult.
Parson’s spokeswoman, Kelli Jones, said the Governor’s Office is reviewing her clemency petition. “These are not decisions the governor takes lightly,” Jones said in an email. Komp said McLaughlin’s lawyers are scheduled to meet with Parson on Tuesday.
A judge sentenced McLaughlin to death after a jury failed to decide on death or life without parole. A federal judge in St. Louis ordered a resentencing hearing in 2016, citing concerns about the effectiveness of McLaughlin’s trial attorneys and faulty jury instructions. . But in 2021, a federal appeals court reinstated the death penalty.
McLaughlin’s lawyers also cited the jury’s indecision and McLaughlin’s remorse as reasons Parson should spare her life. Missouri has only executed one woman before, state Department of Corrections spokeswoman Karen Pojmann said in an email.
McLaughlin’s lawyers said she previously lived with another transgender woman, but she now lives in isolation ahead of her scheduled execution date. Pojmann said 9% of Missouri’s prison population are women, and all capital inmates are incarcerated at the Potosi Correctional Center.
“It is extremely unusual for a woman to commit a capital offense, such as a brutal murder, and even more unusual for a woman, as was the case with McLaughlin, to rape and murder a woman,” Pojmann said. Missouri executed two men this year.
Kevin Johnson, a 37-year-old man who was convicted of ambushing and killing a St. Louis-area police officer he blamed for the death of his younger brother, was executed last month. Carmen Deck died by injection in May for killing James and Zelma Long during a burglary at her home in De Soto, Missouri, in 1996.
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